Jeremy Corbyn, along with multiple backbench Conservative MPs, called for Tata to be nationalised, whilst John McDonnell called for Javid to resign.

“BHS is going bust because time has moved on, because the firm made some poor decisions in the past - that’s how markets work”

The press was filled with wall-to-wall articles about energy taxes, tariffs, Chinese dumping and the like. The Government eventually promised special energy subsidies to help Tata out.

Today, British Home Stores (BHS) is about to go bankrupt, at the cost of 11,000 direct jobs (and perhaps 15,000 more across the supply chain). Do you think there will be an emergency Cabinet meeting? With #saveourBHS trend worldwide? Will the Mirror launch a petition for the Government to intervene? Will John McDonnell be calling for someone else to resign? Will MPs demand nationalisation?

Allister Heath: BHS's demise is just capitalism at work

00:49

I’m guessing not. And the fact that the answer to all these questions is so obviously no just goes to show how hypocritical and preposterous all the posing was about Tata.

Concerns about Tata were nothing really to do with a company of more than 10,000 workers going bust. More than 10,000 workers lose their jobs in Britain every day, and yet we have very low unemployment (about 5 per cent).

The interest in Tata was because it’s steel. Steel seems so much more manly than a department store. We imagine sweaty men and sparks in the background and an element of danger and blistered hands and honest toil. That seems like proper work – not, of course, that modern steel working is really like that – and certainly not that the vast majority of us want to do anything like that ourselves.

We’d rather be safely in an office looking at a computer or standing in a shop selling something. But we feel slightly guilty about that and enjoy the vicarious romance of our fake vision of a “proper worker” existing somewhere.

Gupta: Britain's steel industry 'one of world's most inefficient'

01:26

BHS is going bust because time has moved on, because the firm made some poor decisions in the past, because it just got unlucky — whatever the reason or reasons, that’s how markets work.

It’s no fun for BHS workers who will have to find another job, but there’s no lack of other jobs for them to find.

The Government will be sympathetic, there will be benefits and retraining, and if in any regions job losses are particularly concentrated, there may be regional support.

That’s the right way for these things to work. That’s the way they should have worked with steel as well. But why should a retail worker’s job loss be unimportant whilst a steel worker’s job loss create a national furore?

The answer is that they matter precisely as much (or as little) as each other.